One Room Challenge Week 2: Bathroom Demo

It’s WEEK TWO of the Spring 2021 One Room Challenge!

This week I started the demo of our first floor bathroom. It was quite the process and needed to be done very strategically. For those of you who checked out my Week 1 post, you know that this is our only full bathroom in the house, which poses quite the dilemma when the walls and fixtures are being ripped out. For obvious reasons we can’t go 8 weeks without a working tub or shower so the best thing to do in this situation was to work on the demo in stages, saving the removal of the tub/tile surround and the tile floor until the last possible moment. This also means that when we do finally rip those last components out, we need to be ready for a quick install of the new tub and tile.

Demo went a little slower in this space than on previous projects because of the planning but also because it involved ripping out several layers of drywall and plaster. One of the walls had two layers of plaster behind the drywall! We also ran into a small hurdle with the floors. When the home was originally built they used a concrete mortar bed to install the tile. This means that instead of a traditional tile and subfloor we will need to rip up 1”+ thick concrete and the tile then build the subfloor up to meet the height of the original flooring.

Aside from the planning of what to demo and what to hold off on, we needed to get all of our plumbing in order so that it would be ready for the new fixtures to be installed in the coming weeks. Over the last four years Brian has slowly been removing old galvanized plumbing, replacing it with PEX as we worked on each space. This bathroom project was the perfect opportunity to replace the remaining galvanized pipes. While I was on demo duty he was in our basement wrapping up plumbing connections. Once he has it all installed the entire first floor will be on a PEX system with individual fixture shut-off valves. This will make plumbing our full bathroom so much easier because we will be able to turn off the water for just this space while leaving the water on for the rest of the house.

The plan for this upcoming weekend is to finish removing the ceiling and start removing the floors while Brian finishes the plumbing. From there we will install the new drywall ceiling and the walls. A dumpster will be delivered early next week so we can start to clear the debris and we will begin demo on the tub and tile that following weekend. From there is will all start to come together pretty quickly.

Check back next week for a peek at the room progress and our design plan! For more updates throughout the week be sure to follow along on Instagram and don’t forget to check out the progress of each of the Featured Designers and Guest Participants spaces.